Effective Questionnaires

How do we make an effective and helpful questionnaire?

• Semantic Scales
• Keep it simple enough to be understandable
• "Other"
• "If yes/no, why"
• Ask about what you want to know
• Ask precise questions, not vague ones
• Limit the amount of responses
• "if never, would you?"

In class we looked at a questionnaire on the music industry. We looked at the magazine and had to work out how to improve certain questions and add/remove aspects we thought did not help research the audience. The questionnaire was focusing on researching for creating an app and video for a made up artist. This was quite specific so taking out some of the pointless questions was easy.

 One of these questions were: " Do you own a smartphone? If so what brand?" This question doesn't have any real relevance to the audience. All it gives us is the phone that they use, what we want is which app/music platform they use so that our app can be targeted to work well with that device.

We also looked at the first questions which where "How old are you?" and "Are you Male or Female?" these are very crucial questions as without them you do not know who is giving you the rest of the information in the questionnaire. If you do find out the age and gender of the participant you can then tell what your target audience answered.

Homework Mr Maddocks due Thursday 26th

Questionnaires can inform a company or designer on many aspects of their target audience and things that can improve their work. Firstly they ask the participants age and gender, this helps the company interpret the answers in the rest of the questionnaire. For example, if a magazines producers target audience is 16-25 year old males then they will not be overly interested in questionnaires answered with different ages and genders. For example 50+ females.  With this information they can use other answerers to improve their work. This can be multiple choice answers such as "How many music magazines do you buy a week?" or scale answers such as "On a scale of 1-10, how much do you enjoy indie-rock music compared to other genres". All of this type of information from questionnaires will come in handy when creating a magazine focused at a specific target audience.

Some topics that I could be:

• Age
• Gender
• Preferred Genre
• Preferred Bands
• Opinions on magazines
• Preferred magazines
• How often they read/buy music magazines
• Preferred Music streaming/listening service
• How do they download music
• Do you use music apps
• Do you use social media
• Preferred Radio station
• Preferred music TV channel
• Live music
• Festivals
• Brands of clothes and footwear (for advertising)
• Makes of cars (for advertising)
• Drinks (advertising)
• Font
• Language

Codes of practice and regulation

Defamation
The definition of defamation is to attack an individuals privacy and reputation.

Libel
The definition of libel is the publication or print of defamatory matter in permanent form such as TV, radio and magazines.

Slander
The definition of slander is a malicious, untrue and defamatory declaration in transient form.

Copyright
Copyright has been around since 1911 when the law was introduced. It stops people from redistribution of others work and there is no single law worldwide. It enables producers and authors to decide how their work is distributed. It requires no registration to make it copyright, just a copy right symbol on the work. Different things have lengths of copyright e,g. music has a copyright of 50 years and films have a copyright of 70 years.

Homework Ms Bennet

The national union on journalists was founded in 1907 and is one of the biggest journalists' union in the world. The NUJ is a group which works to protect the rights of journalists. It works to protect pay, conditions and freedom. The union is an active union and takes pat in campaigning to ensure rights are met. The union is represented in towns and cities throughout the UK and some parts of Europe.

The PCC (press complaints commission) administers the system of self regulation for the press. It deals with complaints, framed within the terms of the editors' code of practice. The purpose of the PCC is to serve the public by holding editors to account. They strive to protect the rights of individuals, while at the same time preserving appropriate freedom of expression for the press.

Genre moodboard

Local products and events

I did research on which local products, events and businesses are advertised in local magazines. I looked at the magazine 'XYZ' this magazine advertises a lot of pubs, bars and events such as comedy shows. I specifically look at a one page advert on 'The Brunswick'. The Brunswick goes along with the theme of the magazine as both shows off the bohemian side of Brighton. The advert a big advert that covers a whole page, it is featured on page 18 nearer the front of the magazine and is one of the first big adverts featured. It gives ideas of some of the offers such as mid week deals on drinks. This type of deal is perfect for the audience of the magazine. The offer means that more people will be traveling a long time to the venue to get their low price drink. Although the pub loses profit on the drink. The customers are likely to enjoy the pub and stay for more which is where they make up for loses.

Magazine analysis

Magazines I have heard of:

• NME
• Q
• Kerrang
• Mojo

Magazines I have read/bought:

• NME
• XXL

 Textual analysis:

Title:
XXL

Publisher:
Harris Publications

Target audience:
The magazine is mainly aimed at the age range of 16-30. This is because the genre of music featured in the magazine is mainly Hip-hop, Rap and R&B. These genres of music are mainly aimed at this age range as that is the type of music that the listen too. This is backed up by the fact that some of the language used in the magazine such as 'Dope' is also aimed at a younger audience. The pictures in the magazine are also of people on this age range. The adverts in this magazine contradict the age range as most of them feature alcohol, cars and clothes that are very unrealistic/illegal to buy at that age. I think the magazine is mainly aimed at the male audience as many of the things advertised or of a male dominated market. Such as cars, alcohol and male clothes. The magazine also features many pictures of half naked women which can be attractive towards a male audience.

Articles:
The magazine mainly features biographical articles on artists and bands. These include interviews and where questions are asked of the artist and are answered. These articles mainly include pictures on who it is about and sometimes information about them listed in bullet points. There are a few articles about products you can buy, these aren't layered out like adverts yet are more like a catalogue.

Description of a male and female photo:
The photo on page 59 of Wiz Khalifa and Amber Rose features the two holding each other with the lady's arms around the man.This possibly shows that the man is the powerful one out of the two. He also has a very serious expression on his face compared to his partner who looks clearly happy. The picture is in black and white which fits in with the theme of the magazine which mainly features dark colours.

What 'ideologies' are implied:
There are a few things that I think are repeated through the magazine and are therefore seen as ideologies. Most of the pictures of males in the magazine have tattoos, this could imply that tattoos are seen as a 'cool' thing to have. The magazine also features a lot of pages on clothing that you can buy, like a catalogue. This could be influencing the audience on what clothing is good to wear at the moment.

Genre:
The magazine mainly features Hip-hop, Rap and R&B. Some of the artists featured include Wiz Khalifa, Drake, Jay-Z, J-Cole, DMX and 2 Chainz.

Publishing Sector

The publishing sector in the UK

• The publishing industry employs over 195,000 people which represents 36% of the creative media workforce
• 50,500 work in journals and magazines

www.creativeskillset.org

My review of two job lists from magazines

I can see small differences and similarities in the jobs from both magazines. 'Q' has a lot less jobs in the editorial section compared to 'NME' who have a lot of jobs listed there. This could possibly show that they think that editing their magazine is a big part of the production. 'NME' have headings such as 'Innovators' and 'NME.com' whereas 'Q' has headings such as 'Reader Services'. Both magazines use similar job titles, Such as editors and designers. 'Q' uses 'Chief' as a title whereas 'NME' doesn't. This shows that 'Q' has a focus on team leaders who run each each job sector. 'NME' has a job section called 'NME.com' which shows they may have a heavy focus on their website and have a whole team dedicated that they think are a key role in the company.

Hierarchy within their team (top to bottom)

Editor in chief / Executive editor / Editor /

Responsible for all policies and operations.

Editor at large and Contributing editor

Advanced freelancers who contribute.

Managing editor

Co-ordinates the publications editorial activities: budget, staffing, schedule etc.

Commissioning / Acquisitions editor

Arranges writers to produce content.

Section editor

Oversees all of the content in certain sections of the publication.

Copy / Sub editors

Edit text across page, check for errors, facts and corrects anything.

Reporters

People who write the stories.

What do you think are the responsibilities of a chief editor?

They are the public face of the magazine on the website, magazines and events like awards ceremony's. They take responsibility for how everything runs and make sure that all the editors are doing their job and delegate them specific tasks. They host meetings and make decisions on what the theme of the magazine will be for example 'Glastonbury'. The Chief editor will control the budget and control legal decisions.They set deadlines and calendars for their team and make sure that the magazines content is correct. They have to liaise with the publisher, marketing departments, media sales team and PR agencies. They will finalise the magazine and make the last decisions before they go to press. We watched the following details which gives us an idea of what it takes to make it into the industry:

HOMEWORK due Tuesday 17 th for Miss Chinn

After doing some research on http://creativeskillset.org/publishing I found out some more specific job roles in the publishing industry, such as:

Copy editor

A copy editor is basically the proof reader of the publication, they check that the text is readable, accurate and ready for publication.They work on all types of publications such as newspapers and magazines.They make certain it fits in with the house style, correcting any errors or typos in the text, checking that the images that are used in the magazine have the correct captions under or beside them.

Art editor

Art editors work in the design or art sector of a magazine team and look after how a magazine looks, this includes images and things like colour themes that run throughout. An Art Editor is in charge of making the magazine look good and easy to read. Their typical work would be to; laying out the pages and using the most suitable graphics and photographs.

Web content manager

A web content manager is responsible for the information that is displayed on a company's website. They ensure it is suitable for customer needs. They normally work along side the art editors to make sure the website fits in with the house style and theme if the magazine.

Qualifications training and standards

The publishing industry requires high qualifications with 51% of their highly qualified workforce holding an undergraduate degree or equivalent. As a result having a higher education will provide a substantial pathway into the industry.

Pre-production

When thinking about the processes taken before a magazine is created, I thought of several categories and thought about what the category would include. These are some of the things I thought of:

Finance

One of the first things I considered was the funding needed and which outgoings would occur during production. Some of the things I thought of were the costs of printing the magazine each month. I also thought about the costs such as rent of the office we would use to design and print the magazine and staff that would be needed to help in the processes taken. I also thought about equipment such as printers and computers which would be used in production.

Personnel

After thinking about finance I thought about what kind of people I would need to help in the production of the magazine. I came up with many people that I would need such as journalists, photographers, editors and a publisher. All of these factors would be key to make magazine production work.

Time

The next step after thinking about these things was time. I had to come up with a deadline for the magazine to be finished so that the magazine would not over run production date. This meant that I would have to plan out every step of production and make a plan on which steps are more important to get finished first.

Content

I then thought about what content would be in my magazine such as pictures, copy and input from contributors such as bands and artists (for this specific genre of magazine).